Mediating Transcendence: Popular Film, Visuality, and Religious Experience in West Africa

Mediating Transcendence Johannes Merz

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Mediating Transcendence: Popular Film, Visuality,

and Religious Experience in West Africa

Paper presented at the conference on New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa,

July 10-12, 2008, Abuja, Nigeria

Johannes Merz

SIL Togo-Benin

Abstract

Since the 1990s the popularity of locally produced video films has steadily spread across West Africa. In

this paper I explore and explain several factors that I trace back to aspects of culture and tradition that I

consider conditional for this unprecedented success. Rituals and theatrical aspects of traditional religion

find their expression in entertaining aspects of film-watching and in the visuality of film. I argue that

African cultures are not only oral but also eminently visual. African visuality focuses on the perception of

patterns and meaning rather than on realistic representations. An example of this can be found in special

effects that are used to communicate the presence of transcendence in popular films. Such films have

become an integral part of urban African culture and help to maintain an integrated worldview where

modernity, Christianity and traditional religion all have their distinct, but nonetheless tightly linked

spheres. Film generally mediates religious experience to its audiences and acts as a transcendent mediator

between the local or traditional and the global or modern.


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Introduction1

Since its invention in the late 19th century, film has deeply fascinated mankind and has become the most

popular and influential transnational medium. With the rise of the digital age, production and

consumption of film have grown to the extent that film-watching can now be considered a truly global

activity. The West African popular video film industry is a case in point. Its main centre located in

Nigeria, and secondarily in Ghana, only started to develop significantly in the early 1990s. Since then its

startling success can only be imagined in a reported production in Nigeria of more than 1,000 films per

year (Haynes 2006:511). Apart from crucial advances in video technology and its increased accessibility,

the West African video film phenomenon has also been linked to the recent deregulation of the media

sector in many West African countries (e.g. Larkin 2000:211; Meyer 2003a). In this paper I will argue

that there are also important cultural reasons for the medium’s success as expressed in popular video

films that are rooted in African culture, tradition and experience.

It is only recently that mainstream anthropology has started to discover the value of studying popular

African culture, including film. Hackett (1998:259) lamented the fact that media in Africa, especially as

relating to religion, is a much under-studied topic. Since then the situation has improved with different

scholars researching the phenomenon of the booming video film industry in Anglophone West Africa and

other related topics. Most of these authors have studied either popular films themselves or film in

distinctly urban and modern settings. There remains a distinct lack of studies that focus on the medium in

more rural and traditional locations, which is the focus of this paper.

Film, in its origin, is the product of a thoroughly literate and industrial society and thus a highly

complex and modern form of medium, relying exclusively on technology to transmit its message. Being a

typically urban and modern medium, it is not easily accessible to rural communities nor can it be directly

linked or compared with any local or traditional medium. In spite of this, a good understanding of the

more local and traditional side of African culture, especially in terms of visuality, entertainment and

religious experience, permits a deeper understanding of the nature of the medium of film, of how it

functions in African societies, and how it works as a slow but steady catalyst of religious transformation,

even in more remote and rural parts of the continent.

I approach the subject from the perspective of contemporary anthropology which includes my own

experience and work among the Bebelibe who live in a rural area of the north-west of the Republic of

Benin.2 Using the existing literature on popular film in Ghana (Meyer 2003a–2006) and Nigeria (Haynes

1 My thanks go to my Bebelibe friends with whom I watched and discussed films and to Sharon Merz, Marie-Claire

Nicole, Harriet Hill, Rob McKee, Julie Taylor and Julia Anne McCord for encouraging me in my research and for

their stimulating comments. 2 The Bebelibe consist of an estimated 30,000 people speaking a language they call Mbelime. Both ethnic group and

language have also been referred to as ‘Niendé’ or ‘Nyende’ (Huber 1973, 1979). Between 1995 and 1997 I spent


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2000, 2006; Larkin 2000; Ukah 2003, 2005 and others), I will attempt to draw some generalisations by

interpretatively linking the situation of the Bebelibe into the wider West African context. My aim is to

show what I consider general trends by relating film to Christianity and traditional religion, sometimes

drawing on examples from a more global perspective. In doing so I consciously accept the risk of

omitting details and of not representing all segments of African society.

I will attempt to trace different aspects of popular African film back to beliefs, practices and other

traits of African culture that predate the introduction of the new medium to the continent. These include

theatre and drama, and more importantly for the purpose of this paper, traditional religious rituals. Such

rituals not only contain aspects of theatrical performance and entertainment, but also a strong

transcendent perspective and religious function. Ritual practices and activities usually have visual aspects

that, I will argue, are founded in the presence of an important visuality that touches on many parts of life,

including learning processes of rituals, and religion in a wider sense. Today, many of these aspects of

visual and religious culture are mediated and extended through film into modern urban, and often

Christian, life. Film, as a mediator between the local and the global (Ukah 2005), has a broad and

complex function within society. Following scholars like Lyden (2003) or Marsh (2004), I will look at

film from the perspective of functional religion by considering film-watching as a religious activity and

experience. The narratives of film mirror society while at the same time they shape it. I contend that in the

West African context, film-watching itself has become a direct functional substitute for traditional

religion. Popular films depict different aspects and ideas of traditional culture and beliefs – often

diabolised from a Pentecostal-charismatic perspective – by offering an entertainment ritual that takes the

place of traditional ritual.

Before I return to a more in-depth study of these issues I will give a sketch of the origin of the West

African industry of popular films by focusing on how the new medium has been appropriated to the local

context both by filmmakers and their audiences, and made into something distinctly African. I will show

that popular video films in West Africa are part of an enchanted universe through the medium’s

association with, and incorporation of, magic and religion; popular films, I argue, mediate a transcendent

experience to their audiences.

Appropriations of film

It is still widely assumed that ‘primitive’ audiences watch film as ‘reality’. For the African context, this

prejudiced myth is persistently kept alive by anecdotes that permit and even support this view. In a letter

to the editor, for example, Kumbo (1998) relates the story of a Cameroonian youth who destroyed a

television set with his catapult when it showed a close-up of the referee of a World Cup football game

who he thought to be biased against his own nation. With due satisfaction he then claimed to have killed

seven months among the Bebelibe doing anthropological research (Merz 1998). In 2002 I moved to their area as part

of my work with SIL Togo-Benin, continuing my research on a part-time basis to the present day.


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the referee. This account follows the common fascination with the first contact between the ‘savage’ and

‘civilisation’ ascribed to first time audiences of film, an event that has often featured in film itself (Moore

2000:3, 48-49). The equation of film and reality for early audiences has also been assumed and discussed

for the West and more recently rejected in newer film studies (Lyden 2003:51-53). In the same line,

Meyer (2003a:206) emphasises for the African context that the assumption of viewing film as reality

merely springs from Western fantasy. African audiences, which are always active and creative (Barber

1997), quickly come to terms with the new medium and appropriate the technologies that go with it.

New ideas or commodities, such as film to new audiences, are made sense of within the specific

worldview of the receiving culture, so that they can be used by the people according to their own ideas,

beliefs and needs. Such processes of indigenisation or appropriation do not lead to the homogenisation of

culture (Appadurai 1996:32). They are usually based on a cultural precedence, or on local concepts, that

are used to make sense of the new idea or product, and are then adapted to fit the new circumstances.

These processes of appropriation, that can be complex and multilayered, can also be seen in the advent

and development of the West African film industry.

The starting point is to compare film with the performance of folk stories, as well as with drama and

theatre.3 They are all art forms that rely more or less on acting and interaction with the audience, and they

remain well known and popular across the continent. It comes as no surprise that the West African video

film industry can be directly traced back to different traditions of theatre, and sometimes popular

literature, such as the one of the Igbo (Ukadike 2000:254) or Hausa (Larkin 2000:230) in Nigeria. For

Ghana too, Collins (2004:417, 419) sees a clear link between concert parties, as theatre is usually called

in Ghana, and Ghanaian popular video films, and in the Republic of Benin different drama groups have

started to produce video films. The most important and best documented link between theatre and video

films undoubtedly comes from south-western Nigeria where Ogundele (2000) has described in detail how

Yoruba travelling theatre developed into today’s industry of Yoruba video film (see also Barber

1997:350; Haynes 2000:13, 2006:515; McCall 2002:86). In the 1940s Yoruba travelling theatre, that has

its roots in school and church drama, expanded and became commercial. From the mid-1970s onwards it

has been recorded and shown on television. Its success was soon followed by film productions on

celluloid which was later replaced by the economically more viable video format (McCall 2002:86-87;

Ogundele 2000; Owens-Ibie 1998; Ukah 2003:208-209).

3 Drama and theatre in the strict sense was often not known in pre-colonial African culture (Finnegan 1970: 500-

517). Among the Bebelibe, for example, their function was filled by seasonal storytelling that also included songs,

riddles and some acting and other dramatic effects on the part of the performer. These days, drama can be watched

at Christmas in churches or sometimes at official and public events. Other forms of traditional entertainment are

linked to traditional religion, a point that I will address later on in this chapter (see also Barber 1997).


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The centre of the booming video film industry in West Africa clearly remains in Nigeria, and to a

lesser degree Ghana, which sometimes co-produces films with Nigeria.4 More recently, the Nigerian

popular film industry is spilling over into the francophone Republic of Benin, where film production

slowly started in the early 2000s, mainly under the influence of popular Yoruba language films and local

theatre groups. An important step in the development of Beninese popular film was LAhA Productions’

debut Abeni (2006), a Yoruba language film that was co-produced with Nigeria’s Tunde Kelani of

Mainframe Productions. Since then, LAhA Productions has become the most important film producer in

Benin.

While African video film productions fall into a number of different genres, they often follow the

conventions of the melodrama (Haynes 2000, 2006; Meyer 2004:99-100; Ukadike 2000:246). They take

up local beliefs and practices and deal with culture-specific issues of relationships, both within the family

and with invisible powers. What sets Nigerian video films apart is that they tend to show physical

violence and ritual murder more explicitly and more frequently, thus reflecting what happens in parts of

society (Okwori 2003). In order to be successful, West African popular video films are often set in a

Christian (Pentecostal or charismatic) and distinctly modern and urban environment in which the devil

and other powers of darkness and their human agents fight against Christians and God, with the latter

good side winning in the end. A key trademark of such popular films is their visualisation of magic and

the revelation of occult powers (Meyer 2003a:209-210, 2004; Ukah 2003), which clearly shows that

Africans are developing their own cinematography and cultural conventions. According to Ukadike

(2000), these films can be regarded as an emerging new cultural art form.

For the purpose of this paper I am particularly interested in the Pentecostal-charismatic films that are

known, and remain very popular, among the Bebelibe.5 The most important Beninese Pentecostal-

charismatic production undoubtedly is Yatin: Lieu de souffrance (2002) by Stedafilm International. It was

written, directed and produced by Christine Madeleine Botokou and follows the example and conventions

of popular West African video films. Botokou spent many years in Nigeria where she was involved in the

production of popular video films. In 1998 she returned to Benin to start her own inter-denominational

drama and film ministry (Mayrargue 2005:248-250). Yatin remains popular in Christian circles

throughout Benin, as well as in neighbouring Togo and Burkina Faso. It is shown in homes and churches

and sometimes presented at evangelistic events. On the commercial side of film production the Beninese

4 For detailed descriptions of such video films see for example Haynes (2006), Larkin (2000), McCall (2002), Meyer

(2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005), Okwori (2003), Ukadike (2000) and Ukah (2003, 2005). 5 It is interesting to note that Benin’s Christian scene is also mirrored in popular film. Gbêtô: Tout se paie ici bas

(2007, SAS Productions) is a Fon language film that offers a charismatic Catholic solution to the spiritual attack

provoked by a vodu priest while the recent series La Puissance de Dieu in Fon and Gun (no date, Solo Production)

comes from the distinct perspective of Christianisme Céleste, an important Beninese independent church. These

films are not yet known among the Bebelibe where the language may well prove a barrier to their potential

popularity.


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Akoyane Films gave their debut with Le berger (2004) which has also become popular among the

Bebelibe.6 Yatin and Le berger both present urban-based pastors as the heroes of the films fighting against

witchcraft (Yatin) or Mammy Wata spirits (Le berger) that are prevalent in respective villages that are

presented as being distinctly rural and backward. After a period of suffering the pastors claim complete

victory which results in the deliverance and conversion of the afflicted victims.

While the magic shown in popular film has become a characteristic of these films, the magic of film

equally influences the medium and its perception by African audiences. Next, I turn to discuss another,

more subtle and implicit, appropriation of film into African culture, namely the understanding that the

medium of film and especially the underlying film technology is a result of witchcraft or magic.

The magic of film

Since its invention, film has always had a touch of magic. This manifests itself in magic being shown as

part of the narrative in film and even more so in the magic of the technical qualities of film (Meyer

2003a; Moore 2000). It is this magic that makes objects move, using the inanimate and dead matter of

light through celluloid, to produce a lifelike representation that appears on the silver screen transforming

it into a window to a different but nonetheless familiar world. It grabs our attention and absorbs our

senses so that as an audience, we experience an enchanted alternate reality where magic can exist and

where the possible is only limited by our own imagination.

Speaking of magic in this way in the West, however, has not always been acceptable. During the time

of the Enlightenment the very concept was made into the antithesis of modernity. Magic was linked with

the ‘primitive’ and the ‘other’ and banned from the West where it was claimed to be steadily replaced by

‘science’ through the processes of rationalisation and secularisation. This replacement, however, was

more ideological in nature than it was real (Meyer 2003a:221). Gell (1988:9) has argued that magic did

not in fact disappear from the West; it diversified and became more difficult to identify. Pels (2003:3-4)

takes the discussion a step further in maintaining that magic cannot be separated from modernity, it

belongs to it.

Gell (1988:6) contends that the Enlightenment opposition between the technical and the magical is

without foundation. They occupy the same space and follow the same logic and thus depend on each

other and interact with each other (Meyer 2004:105). While the technology of film produces the magic of

the silver screen on a cognitive and symbolic level, the so-produced magic in turn emphasises the

enchanted character of film as a technology and thus of the magic of film itself. Film, then, becomes the

prototype of the production and mediation of modern magic; it is the locus where magic and technology

meet, where the binary distinction between reality and fiction, science and magic, and the secular and

religious becomes blurred and loses its pertinence (cf. ibid. 2003b, 2006:307).

6 Akoyane Film’s success with Le berger was followed by a series in five volumes called Le triangle des élus (2006)

which has so far not reached the fame of its predecessor. It follows the same basic story line as Le berger or Yatin.


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Among the Bebelibe of northern Benin, as well as in many parts of Africa, technology can also been

seen as related to magic.7 Technical commodities, such as televisions and other equipment needed to

consume film, are often understood as the products of Western, and thus modern, witchcraft. Hence, they

are perceived as being enchanted or having magical connotations (e.g. Hackett 1998:267; Marshall-

Fratani 2001:93; Lyons and Lyons 1987:131-132). Recent research has shown that African witchcraft

beliefs are inherently dynamic and ambivalent and can easily reinvent themselves in new situations. They

are influenced by changes occurring through modernisation, while at the same time, these changes may be

interpreted in terms of witchcraft. Consequently, concepts of witchcraft are bound to be used to

appropriate technology into African worldviews (Geschiere 1997; Merz 1998:69-70, 2004, 2008; Moore

and Sanders 2001:10). In the light of this, ‘witchcraft’ in itself has become a difficult, and in many ways

unsatisfactory, term to translate African concepts and beliefs relating to magic into Western

anthropological discourses (Merz 2008; Moore and Sanders 2001:3-6; Pels 2003:12-17). In applying

magic or witchcraft terminology to technology, ‘witchcraft’ needs to be understood also in terms of

‘mystical knowledge’ that is needed in order to apply technology to the production of technical

commodities. Both witchcraft and technology rely on special knowledge to exist, be it acquired through

initiation or advanced study. Even more so than in the West, film in Africa can be understood as a

mediator and a medium of modern magic, sustaining its persistence and continuity regardless of social

and cultural change.

Magic is usually analysed and described in anthropology as being separate from the concept of

religion. But it is also recognised that they are linked, and sometimes overlap, as the example of film

shows. In film, magic and religion converge in a similar way to how film can be understood as both

medium and message. In some ways medium and message remain separate from each other, but at the

same time, they are also intrinsically linked. Meyer (2006:290) has argued that a message always affects

its medium, but equally, that the medium shapes the way a message is received and made sense of. The

magic inherent in the medium of film can cause the medium to fade away in order to support and portray

a sometimes religious message and provide a religious experience, thereby underlining the transcendence

of both medium and message.

Religion has always played a more or less important role as a subject depicted in the new medium.

The reason for this is undoubtedly that film seems suited to portray religious themes as filmmakers can

make use of the magic of the medium through special effects and montage tricks. In the West, this is most

obviously shown in the genre of Jesus films which can be traced back to Passion plays. Jesus films were

among the first commercially produced films and they continue to be produced today (Walsh 2003).

Likewise, the first Indian film producer, Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, was inspired to make films depicting

Hindu mythology after having watched an American Jesus film in Mumbai during Christmas 1910

7 It is interesting to note that one of the early Hausa names for the cinema was majigi, derived from the English

‘magic’ (Larkin 2000:225).


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(Bakker 2007:44). Religion has continued to feature in Indian films, even in recent times, whose

characteristic song and dance sequences are a direct development of Hindi mythology (Wenner 2002).

It is interesting to note that religion in popular West African films cannot be linked directly to

dramatised mythology, religion or ritual as is the case in India and the West. In spite of this, I see a clear

link between the medium of film and African traditional religions more in terms of a functional mode

rather than a representational: both film and religion share theatrical and entertaining aspects. This is

undoubtedly facilitated by the fact that, unlike in Europe,8 the boundaries between religion and

entertainment have remained blurred in Africa. This is also evident in popular video films and more

generally in Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity, as well as in traditional religion (Collins

2004; Meyer 2006).

Entertainment in religion and film

Traditional religion often plays a major part in popular West African films, even when it has been

affected by Christians imagining it in its diabolised form (see Meyer 2005). In contemporary African

society at large, witchcraft beliefs, rituals, sacrifices and possession ceremonies also remain part of

everyday life and can hardly be ignored. Anthropologists have described and analysed the complexity of

African traditional religions in different ways. One of them is to see an element of acting and theatrical

performance in traditional rituals, whether they are diabolised or not. Stoller (1995), for example, takes

this as a starting point by using a theatrical explanation as the basis to analyse the social memory

embodied in Hauka spirit possession in Niger. Apart from the Hauka, the entertaining and theatrical

aspect of traditional religion is evident in masqueraded dances, such as those performed by the Yoruba

Egungun cult. Besides providing entertainment, the dancers of Egungun who embody the spirits they

represent, offer a religious ritual that acts as a mediator between the ancestors and the living (ibid.:86;

Barber 1997:350-352; cf. Finnegan 1970:509-516; Lyden 2003:54, 79).

A theatrical element is also present in rituals and ceremonies performed by the Bebelibe. Among the

most important ones are the two main types of initiation rites and the burial and funeral ceremonies. The

first kind of initiation, Tikonte,9 is performed yearly for both boys and girls by the Bebelibe and their

north-western neighbours (Huber 1979; Kreamer 1995), while the second more complex type, the Difone

cycle of initiations that lasts four years is mainly celebrated by the eastern and southern clans of the

Bebelibe and their neighbours, the Betammaribe (Sewane 2002). The Difone cycle includes the different

8 In European Christianity, church services have often been seen in opposition with visual and other kinds of

entertainment. When British television began to offer Sunday evening shows, many Christians preferred to stay

home rather than to attend evening services. The visual media thus changed church-going patterns in Britain, an

issue which still has not been settled (Marsh 2004:19-20). 9 For typographical reasons, I use a simplified form of the standard orthography for words in Mbelime, the language

of the Bebelibe.


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initiations called Difone and Ditentide for boys and Dikuntide for girls. While Difone is considered a

secretive and severe initiation, all the other rites (Ditentide, Dikuntide as well as Tikonte) remain popular

due to their public displays of colourful paraphernalia, music and dance. Ditentide, Dikuntide and Tikonte

all end with important public celebrations during which the novices are almost playfully dressed in

colourful (usually red and white) garments that include cowry shells, beads, hats, towels, sunglasses and

other paraphernalia specific to each initiation. The novices are required to perform the dances they have

learnt during the initiation to the specific rhythm of drums that are sometimes accompanied by the songs

of the relevant initiation rite. The purpose of all these public events is the demonstration and celebration

of the successful completion of the specific initiation during which the novices were made to endure

physical and spiritual tests and were taught secrets, often of religious nature, as for example described by

Huber (1979) or Sewane (2002). Following the successful completion of an initiation, the initiates are

accepted by the community as full adults.

Among the Bebelibe, burial and funeral rites for adults are even more important than the initiation

rites. While the burial rites need to be performed within a day of someone’s death out of necessity, the big

funeral rites last three days and are organised at least a year later, usually towards the end of dry season.

They have as their main purpose the transition of the deceased person to ancestorhood which is marked

by the installation of a large upturned and pierced clay pot on the person’s grave.

Both burial and funeral rites are complex and elaborate, and they can be considered a collection of

different rites.10 Often, for example, the specific initiation rites undergone by the deceased person, feature

again during both burial and funeral rites through their rhythms, dances and sometimes songs. These are

performed at different times during the three days of a funeral with the night of the second day being the

most important time of the rite. Different genres of songs and dances that celebrate the life of the

deceased, or simply entertain, equally have their place. An important part of the big funeral is offering

large quantities of pork and millet beer to the paternal, and more importantly the maternal, family of the

deceased as well as to guests. While the burial ends with the body, or these days the coffin containing the

body, being placed in the grave, the big funeral culminates in the placing of the clay pot on the grave.

10 For a detailed description of the burial and funeral rites of the Betammaribe, the Bebelibe’s direct neighbours, see

Sewane (2003). Although there are some important differences between the two groups, Sewane (ibid.) gives a good

example of the importance and magnitude of these rites among the people groups of north-western Benin.

Blier (1987), in her fascinating but controversial study of the architecture of the Betammaribe, has also given a

description of their funeral rites by applying the metaphor of the Western theatre to the ritual and the house where

the ritual is staged. I am hesitant to follow Blier’s approach as I feel that it detracts from the funeral rites in their

own right and from their importance in themselves. In my understanding, Blier analyses and reads the Betammaribe

architecture and culture as a text to which she brings her own interpretation that I find too strongly determined by

her theoretical background. Sewane (2002:183n.1) also raises methodological concerns and confirms that Blier’s

work can hardly be justified from a local perspective.


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Traditional ritual, whether initiation, burial or funeral, usually draws an audience who follow the

proceedings. Ritual, with its element of performance and drama, serves as an important and popular

means of entertainment in traditional village settings. Among the Bebelibe most ceremonies and rites,

especially funeral rites, remain very popular and well attended, and an informal market for the purpose of

amusement and socialisation develops at the site of the event.

With the arrival of Christianity as introduced by Western missionaries, this element of traditional

entertainment has usually been suppressed, together with traditional religion, without offering a real

alternative (Collins 2004; Meyer 1998). It comes as no surprise that Bebelibe Christians are discouraged

from undergoing initiation rites and many do not even attend the public parts of these ceremonies

anymore. Equally, they are advised to follow burial procedures as outlined by their respective

denomination which are much less exuberant, have little religious significance in the traditional sense,

and are not usually followed by a big funeral.

While this religious entertainment as part of a traditional ritual can, of course, be best experienced by

actively participating in the ritual itself, it can now be watched as represented and acted in a film for the

main purpose of entertainment. The Beninese film Yatin: Lieu de souffrance (2002), for example, opens

with a vodu ceremony as celebrated in southern Benin that would not normally be attended by Christians.

Since the coming of evening time electricity in early 2005 to Cobly, the main town of the Bebelibe, many

people have bought televisions and VCD or DVD players, sometimes in spite of severe economic

difficulties. This kind of equipment is mainly owned by Christians from different denominations who also

constitute the economic force in the town and need to be counted among the wealthier segment of the

population.11 Compared with the more traditional Bebelibe, they do not have the sometimes huge ritual

expenses to host a funeral or have their daughter initiated to Dikuntide, even though many Christians

financially support their respective church. Today, apart from Western, Asian and Ivorian productions,

Beninese films, such as Yatin: Lieu de souffrance (2002) or Le berger (2004) have become well known in

Cobly and remain among the most popular films.12

The enchanted medium of film has the ability to reveal, contain, control and re-imagine traditional

rituals, together with other representations of evil, and thus render them safe for consumption and

entertainment, especially for Christians (cf. Meyer 2005). In this way the theatrical and entertainment

aspect of traditional ritual can remain part of modern and Christian life while at the same time it can be

11 Many shop owners, carpenters, masons, welders, tailors, seamstresses and restaurant owners regularly attend one

of the Christian congregations in Cobly. The two most influential churches are the Roman Catholic Church and the

Église Evangélique des Assemblées de Dieu, a denomination that has its roots in American Pentecostalism (Merz

1998:41-45). 12 Thanks to a diaspora of Bebelibe in Nigeria, Benin’s big neighbour is well known together with its cultural

products of popular films, music and posters. Due to the language barrier, however, Nigerian films remain a rarity in

Cobly, even though a few are now also available in French. Nigerian films are for sale in the larger towns of Benin,

such as Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin.


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rejected as being something from the devil and the past (Meyer 1998). Through the portrayal of ritual,

film mediates transcendence at least to those viewers who have the necessary cultural background or

knowledge to exegete the pictures as having a transcendental aspect which is usually encoded in the

proceedings of ritual itself. Film thus mediates ritual to its audiences in a way that film-watching as a

group activity can be considered to have become ritual in itself (see Lyden 2003; Walsh 2003:11).

While traditional ritual and film contain important aspects of theatre, drama and more generally

entertainment, they are also characterised by a shared importance of visuality. It is therefore important to

further look at the question of visuality in African tradition, as well as in film, and how visuality finds its

expression in the specific cinematography of the West African film industry.

Visuality in tradition and film

In anthropology and related disciplines, African societies have usually been described as being ‘oral’. The

reason for this is found in the presence of corpuses of varied and extensive literature that is transmitted

orally (see e.g. Finnegan 1970). On the other hand, due to the lack of pictures, paintings and other

concrete visual representations of people and objects, visual culture is often considered as playing a less

important role in traditional African cultures. Among the Bebelibe, for example, the only concrete visual

representation I have become aware of in their tradition are small statues sometimes found in the houses

of diviners that represent the siyawesi, spirits which are believed to be mediating between God and the

diviner as an essential part of the divination process (Huber 1973:386-387). I see in this the main reason

why anthropologists have not usually looked at African societies in terms of a visual culture.

In spite of the supposed lack of concrete visual representations, I consider Bebelibe culture, in addition

to it being oral, also as strongly visual. The visual culture of the Bebelibe touches on many areas

including art, symbolism, ritual (see above) and religion. For the purpose for this paper, I will only be

able to give a few examples that directly relate to religious beliefs and practices.13 Ancestors (uhido, pl.

behidibe), guardian spirits (ditenwende, pl. atenwiene) and other spiritual agents all have their visual

representations in the form of different mounds of clay or stacks of rocks. Sometimes their construction

requires prescribed rituals as does their maintenance through the sacrifice of millet beer and different

kinds of animals. After each sacrifice, traces in the form of blood, feathers, pieces of animal skin and

skulls are left on or by the altar and the person for whom a sacrifice has been performed wears a bracelet

on the wrist or below the knee made of feathers or a piece of fur of the animal sacrificed (Huber 1973).

They all visually indicate to the wider public what has been happening.

13 Blier (1987) gives a wealth of examples of the importance of visuality among the Betammaribe, both of

architectural features, and culture more generally, which she interprets through different and multiple metaphors that

do not always seem to be based on local realities. Her controversial approach (see footnote above) reduces the value

of her work for this paper to a mere general affirmation of my premise of the importance of visuality in African

culture.


12

The divination process prescribes exactly what is needed for any kind of necessary sacrifice or the

construction of an altar, down to the colour and colour pattern of the animal in question. Divination is to a

large extent a visual process, as the movements of the divination rod and the patterns formed by the

thrown cowry shells indicate and determine the answers to problems and questions posed (Blier 1991;

Huber 1973:388-392). This process needs to be known not only by the diviner, but also by each head of a

compound who seeks advice on behalf of everybody for whom he is responsible.

The Bebelibe also know many different kinds of medicines (uyanku, pl. iyanki). The purpose of many

of these is to ward off evil and guarantee protection. Such medicines often have a visual representation

that has as a purpose a public reminder that people need to be careful when dealing with the owners of

such medicines. Examples of such medicines are rocks painted with red and black lines and crosses that

are placed at the edge of a field to protect it from curses and theft of crops, or sticks with a wild onion and

a bundle of grass spiked on top of it, all symbols in themselves, placed at the side of a path, to hinder

witches (uhua, pl. behope) from passing.

Sometimes the visual representation of a medicine shows its direct function. For one type, arrows are

attached to a pot which contains the real medicine. The installation is placed in front of a compound. Its

purpose is to ward off witches who, when approaching the house at night, are promised to be shot by said

arrows. The arrows act as a visual symbol of the spiritual protection that this medicine is believed to

offer. The same principle can also be observed at neo-traditional anti-witchcraft shrines of Tigari and

Unkunde which are both found among the Bebelibe (Merz 1998:25-37). The shrines offer their divinities

physical spears which they can use when hunting witches at night. At one urban Tigari shrine I came

across two wooden models of aeroplanes which the priest claimed were being used by his divinity to hunt

modern witches. Some witches, it is believed, rely on technology, such as aeroplanes, which renders their

evil activities even more vicious and dangerous (cf. Geschiere 1997:2-3).

These few examples clearly show that the Bebelibe have a strong visual aspect in their religion and

culture. Having said this, I see their kind of visuality as having a different focus to the one found in

Western societies which has specialised in concrete and realistic visual representations, such as found in

paintings, photos and above all in film. Among the Bebelibe altars generally have a more abstract,

functional and symbolic visual representation which does not directly represent the image of the entity it

represents. The divination process, as well as some of the medicines, are even more abstract in that their

visual symbols represent only meaning. Most aspects of visuality are concerned with perceiving objects,

actions and patterns which communicate a specific meaning and which are not always easily identified by

outsiders as part of the Bebelibe’s visual culture. The focus of the Bebelibe’s visuality is thus more

symbolic, or as I prefer to call it interpretive, than representational which is no less important than visual

culture in Western societies.

Lakoff and Johnson (1999:238) observe that most metaphors used in English to express knowledge are

based on visual perception (knowing is seeing). They conclude that ‘[w]e get most of our knowledge


13

through vision’ (ibid.). This observation also seems to apply to languages and cultures beyond the Indo-

European ones. In Mbelime, the language of the Bebelibe, the verb ya not only covers the semantic areas

of ‘to see, to perceive’, but also ‘to understand’, similar to the English verb ‘to see’.14

A strong link between knowing and seeing has also been confirmed by Sewane (2002, 2003) who

conducted anthropological research among the Betammaribe, the Bebelibe’s direct neighbours. She was

often challenged for asking difficult questions when she could simply observe what was happening.

Seeing, many Betammaribe claimed, should be sufficient for her to understand what she wanted to know.

Sewane (2003) concluded that ‘seeing’ is the way for the Betammaribe themselves to learn about

ceremonies. Rituals and ceremonies, like film, follow a basic narrative structure that is re-affirmed, and

sometimes re-authorised, every time the ritual is performed. For the Bebelibe I have observed that the

ritual narrative is prescribed and supervised by old men who are recognised as authorities and who are

present for the ritual. Often, it is younger men who actually perform a ritual, such as the burial of a body

or the sacrifice of a chicken. The ritual activities are visually supervised by the older men who will make

it known if they do not agree with the way things are done. Sometimes opinions differ between different

old men which give rise to discussions that, if possible, are resolved by consensus which re-authorises the

current way of performing a specific ritual.15 Each performance of a ritual provides a learning experience

for younger men who observe the proceedings and who in the future will become the authoritative voices

in prescribing ritual themselves.

Learning by observation and imitation as it has been described for the Betammaribe (Blier 1991:78;

Sewane 2002, 2003) and observed by myself for the Bebelibe can also be referred to as ‘visual learning’.

This approach to learning is not commonly found in Western style education, but it is widespread in

societies that have been labelled ‘traditional’ or ‘oral’ (see e.g. Harris 1984), as is typical for African

societies. Observing a ritual and watching a film have evident similarities as the same strategy of visual

learning can be applied. This is why Harris (ibid.:83) considers films to be potentially useful in

instructing people who are accustomed to learning visually by observation and imitation. Like a ritual that

can be observed over and over, a film can be watched many times.

Visual learning and the specifics of the interpretative nature of African visuality play an important role

in how African audiences watch films and how African filmmakers make films. The latter are ultimately

determinative for the emerging cinematographic conventions of West African popular video film, giving

14 The link between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ definitely seems to be present among the Bebelibe and encoded in the

language. The single example presented in this paper, however, is not enough to know the extent to which knowing

is seeing as a metaphor is used by the Bebelibe. 15 An example comes from a burial in a village where, for the first time, a coffin was used in January 2005. After a

heated discussion between the old men present it was decided that the coffin should be placed into the grave first

and then the body was lowered into the coffin before it was closed.


14

them an art form that is unique and different from other centres of world cinema, such as Hollywood or

India.

At the centre of popular West African cinematography stands the picture. Ogundele (2000:127) sees a

major shift from the importance of the voice in Yoruba travelling theatre to the image of Yoruba video

films. For Ghana, Meyer (2005:278-279) confirms that audiences emphasise the visual aspects of film

over its sound and language. The historical reason for this visual emphasis goes back to colonial times

when copies of celluloid films were often so bad that the sound was impossible to hear. When Indian

films became popular in Ghana, they were usually enjoyed in the original languages without subtitles, as

is still the case in northern Nigeria. Larkin (1997:412) affirms that in spite of the language barrier, Hausas

understand the main message of Indian films. The sound quality of West African popular video films,

particularly the ones made in Ghana, is usually insufficient to allow for dialogues to be followed easily

(cf. Haynes 2000:2). Meyer (2005:278-279) states that Ghanaian video filmmakers are aware of this

problem and aim to produce video films that can be understood by watching the images alone.

Filmmakers of popular videos thus need to focus their creative efforts on the composition of the

picture and more specifically what it communicates. With the interpretative visuality of their target

audiences they do not need to deliver a thoroughly aesthetic or meticulously realistic picture, as it is

usually expected by Western audiences. African audiences rather stress visual patterns and symbols that

transmit the intended meaning of the filmmaker.

The best example of this can be seen in the special effects often used in popular video films to

visualise the supernatural. In the early days of popular film, namely during the early 1990s, special effects

were, from today’s perspective, rather crude. Sometimes they merely consisted of people vanishing or

simple arrows or spheres moving across the screen to show the flow of supernatural power. Usually,

special effects are also accompanied by sound effects. It is obvious that filmmakers make use of current

home computer technology with the result that contemporary special effects have become technically

better, and will further improve in the future. The Beninese Yatin: Lieu de souffrance (2002), for

example, uses animated bluish lines to represent the flow of supernatural power that are reminiscent of

electric sparks. Stills of people are moved into or out of the picture to show supernatural displacement, or

a (spiritual) person is metamorphosed into a (physical) snake. In Gbêtô: Tout se paie ici bas (2007),

which represents a Catholic perspective, two balls of light emanate from the eyes of the still of a white

Jesus stretching his arms over the planet earth to where they descend. They then strike a spiritual enemy,

represented by a man, who subsequently vanishes.

While such effects have improved considerably since the early days, they are still barely acceptable to

Western audiences as they remain too obvious and not realistic enough. To the target audiences of such

films, on the other hand, they symbolise a sufficient and acceptable visual representation of the presence

and relevance of the supernatural in everyday life and allow for a correct interpretation of the meaning

intended by the filmmaker. Like the medicines described above for the Bebelibe, special effects act as


15

representation and reminder of the presence of the supernatural by providing a visual reference. The

composition of a picture with its special effects, and more generally the cinematography of popular films,

allows the medium to represent life with its constant transcendent presence. The function of special

effects in popular film works analogously to medicines that have functional visual representations, or to

the spears and planes provided by the priest of Tigari for his divinity. Through its cinematography,

popular film directly mediates transcendence to its intended audiences as does traditional religion through

its different visual symbols of altars, rituals and other processes.

The interpretative visuality of African societies is the place where film and religion converge. This

visuality sets film apart from other media and it provides film with its uniquely persuasive and enchanting

power. This brings us back to the nature of film itself and the way it is watched and consumed. Films are

primarily made to entertain, but due to their magical and transcendent nature they provide their audiences

with religious experience.

Film-watching as religious experience

Recent studies of film in the West have underlined its link with religion and its religious function (e.g.

Deacy 2000; Lyden 2003; Marsh 2004; Moore 2000). Accordingly, film-watching can be seen as having

reached the stage where it functions as an alternative to religion, although without being able to substitute

for it. The cathedral has been replaced by the cinema in which people primarily seek to be entertained and

assume the roles of passive, but nonetheless, alert observers. By doing so, they also experience spirituality

and engage in a limited way in worship (Marsh 2004:34).

The affinity of film-watching with religious or spiritual experience can be explained by cognitive

science which studies empirically how the mind works. Accordingly, Lakoff and Johnson (1999:565)

understand a major part of what is commonly called spiritual experience in terms of imaginative empathic

projection. This is the cognitive faculty that lets us feel empathy with other people by projecting their

imaginative experience to ourselves, thereby enabling us to imagine how it is to be another person and to

imitate her or him. This faculty also comes to bear in watching films. A successful film asks of its

audience to identify with at least one of the characters portrayed and to project oneself empathically into

their situation so that their experience can be experienced by the audience. In this way, film-watching in

the West has become ‘one of the contemporary channels which supplies narratives for people to “live

within”’ (Marsh 2004:11; cf. Moore 2000:11; Meyer 2004:105). While in the past Christianity provided a

meta-narrative for Western societies that included morals, ethics and values, it is now films that offer a

myriad of different narratives that contribute to society’s standards and ideals.

Film can be seen as a dialectical mirror of culture: It reflects how culture really is while at the same

time it shows how it ought to be according to current cultural ideas and ideals (Lyden 2003). In this way,

film picks up on trends in society and then processes and popularises them to the extent that it influences

the way we perceive reality (cf. Appadurai 1996; Deacy 2000; Owens-Ibie 1998). An example of this


16

comes from science-fiction films that popularised the pseudo-scientific belief in intelligent extraterrestrial

life and UFOs in the West. Wheen (2004:138-140) reports how the overtly fictional 1990s television

show The X-Files was widely accepted as true, or at least as based on fact, to the extent that students

writing essays in Canada and the USA have often referred to The X-Files as one of their sources.

The persuasiveness and influence film has on reality can equally be observed in Africa. According to

Meyer (2005:286-287, 2006:304), popular West African video films with a Pentecostal-charismatic

nature are often accepted as accurate documentations and revelations of the spiritual realm. The reason

for this seems to lie in the comparison that African audiences make between film and ‘dream’ or ‘vision’.

These are the only traditional concepts that are linked to the idea of moving images that come to persons

from outside their normal consciousness. Like film, they follow a basic narrative structure. It is not

surprising, then, that the Bebelibe usually associate films directly with dreams. They suggest that what

they experience both in dream and in film is comparable. Both can be interrupted: dream by waking up

and film by meddling with the equipment. Many also say that, having watched a film, they experience its

pictures in their dreams. On the other hand, the Bebelibe also recognise that there are differences between

film and dream. While dream is something personal only experienced by an individual, film viewing is

usually public (cf. Lyden 2003:51-52).16

‘Dream’ and ‘vision’ are both accepted as important in a realistic way and as having an immediate

influence on everyday life, and thus a direct relevance. Together with trance and possession they are both

seen as means to access the unseen or spiritual realm.17 While dream is something that everybody

experiences at night, vision is generally believed to be more powerful and its experience is not restricted

to sleep. The gift of vision is possessed only by some, who have acquired it either at birth or during

initiation. By dreaming or by having a ‘second pair of eyes’ (cf. Blier 1991:76), people can ‘see’ what is

happening in the spiritual realm. The ones who possess the gift of vision can then use their special

knowledge in normal life for their own benefit or the benefit of their community. Some may use their gift

to become active players in the spiritual realm where they can have a direct influence by deciding the life

or death of other people, often without them being aware of it. The gift of vision is usually associated

with seers, diviners, healers, prophets and witches.

16 It is interesting to note that this analogy between film and dream has also been explored and discussed by Western

film theorists using psychoanalytic approaches (Lyden 2003:50-52). 17 In this paper I treat dream and vision in a generalised and linked way, knowing that there are differences in their

conception and use even within West Africa. While I found dream to be the favoured comparison for film among the

Bebelibe where vision plays a less important role than dream, it is likely that in other parts of Africa (such as in

Ghana, see below) vision offers a better analogy for film. Although it is theoretically possible to compare film also

with trance and possession, I have not found any indication in anthropological literature that this is happening. For

the Bebelibe, both trance and possession are only marginal phenomena and usually linked with ceremonies that have

come from outside the area, such as the ones celebrated at shrines of Tigari or Unkunde (Merz 1998:25-37).


17

In contemporary Africa, ‘seeing’ beyond the visible remains popular also among Christians, and some

people actively seek to gain the faculty by whatever means necessary (see e.g. Merz 2008; Meyer

2006:301-302). Meyer (2003b) reports that many Ghanaian Pentecostal preachers understand themselves

as possessing the gift of vision which they use for their sermons and in delivering people from demons

and other powers of darkness. Likewise, many Ghanaian video filmmakers claim that they have first

‘seen’ their films in dreams before they actually produce them. Such films usually have a Pentecostal-

charismatic theme depicting aspects of the spiritual realm that are normally believed only to be ‘seen’ in

visions. By declaring themselves visionary in this way, they claim the authority to make films that appear

realistic and true to their audiences, to the point that they are accepted as documentations of the spiritual

realm (cf. Ukah 2005:311).

While the faculty of vision a person has is usually attributed to some kind of mystical force or power,

in the cinema it is technology represented by cameras and projectors that causes film to appear on screen.

The technology underlying film thus takes the place of mystical power and gets identified with it as the

means by which vision is mediated through film. In a wider sense, then, film technology is understood as

modern magic which is acceptable for Christians, emphasising the magic of film itself. Hence, ‘films are

able to mimetically reproduce vision itself’ (Meyer 2004:101) and spectators can share in this public

vision that depicts and reveals the spiritual realm by becoming passive visionaries themselves. Audiences

can thus experience film as a collective dream or vision in both a realistic and enchanted way by morally

engaging in it and actively interacting with what they regard as a representation of reality (Meyer

2003b:26, 2004:104, 2006:303; Ukah 2003:225).

Popular video films keep their audiences aware of the imminence and transcendence of the spiritual

realm and of potential dangers and problems caused by it. Through films people can learn how demonic

forces operate and how to counteract them. Each film offers a solution to the specific problems it portrays

that is often grounded in Christianity (Meyer 2006:304). Popular video films are used similarly to visions

to confirm beliefs about the unseen world and to gain a better understanding of what is happening there.

The so-gained insight can then be applied to everyday life. For example, through the Beninese film Yatin:

Lieu de souffrance (2002) that shows witches attacking their victims in the back, Bebelibe spectators are

reminded that they should keep an eye on what is happening behind their back in real life in order to

avoid being attacked themselves. More generally, McCall (2002:85) has observed for Nigeria that popular

films in Igbo have become an important source for cultural exegesis and that we ‘cannot underestimate

the degree to which these videos have become a part of popular life’ (ibid.:92).

Film is a powerful medium because it stimulates our senses both by imitating experiences of the real

and by mimicking the way our memory works. We easily remember certain films or parts of them. They

can penetrate our memories and haunt us in our dreams. Film happens to us; it can be experienced and

understood intuitively without investing any significant processing effort. Film thus delivers a message of

pre-processed and intentional images, that are supported by language and sounds, straight to our memory.


18

As with any other experience, film can directly imprint itself on our memory and hence shape it, as well

as the way we think, and how we imagine and perceive reality. Both in Africa and the West, then, films

mediate transcendence through their visuality and allow for a religious and distinctly modern experience

by dialectically interacting with wider society and thus influencing peoples’ lives and their perceptions of

reality (Appadurai 1996; Lyden 2003; Marshall-Fratani 2001; Meyer 2004; Ukah 2003:225, 2005).

Conclusion

Film has become an integral part of modern, and often Christian, life in West Africa and it has been

thoroughly appropriated to the local context (Hackett 1998; Ukadike 2000). This is most vividly shown in

the still growing importance the West African popular film industry. While the recent liberalisation of the

media market in many countries of West Africa and the advance in video technology certainly acted as a

major catalyst for the growing industry, I see the real reason for the unprecedented success of popular

West African video films in African culture and tradition that finds itself represented and expressed in

different ways in film itself. I argue in this paper that African societies are not less visually orientated

than other societies, even though it needs to be recognised that the way visuality is experienced differs

between different cultures. African visuality with its traditional interpretative character is currently being

developed by West African filmmakers and cinematographers. It is being made more concrete, explicit

and representational while still maintaining its originality and uniqueness as typically expressed in

contemporary popular video films with their computer generated special effects.

Interpretative visuality as found in African cultures has so far largely escaped Western dominated

approaches to culture, and especially film, because it is less representational and does not offer a ready

and concrete object of study as, for example, oral literature does. Popular video films have often been

criticised and downplayed for their technical simplicity and for a content that can appear melodramatic

and vulgar, and that has been accused of portraying ‘outdated superstitions’ (Meyer 2004:98). Especially

intellectuals sometimes feel uneasy about these films as they do not seem to be compatible with rational

modernity; and they are different from the more established celluloid filmmaking that closely follows

Western models of film (McCall 2002).

With the growing popularity and the importance of popular video films across West Africa, however,

they can no longer be overlooked or downplayed. It needs to be recognised that popular films have gained

a considerable self-importance, that they are developing their own art form and cinematography, and that

they are not a cancerous derivative of modernity. On the contrary, I consider them as an extension of

tradition into modernity through the continuation of traditional religion and interpretative visuality.

Popular video films are transforming the ever changing cultural and religious landscape of West

Africa while they continue themselves to develop as part of an enchanted and modern universe. The

transcendent character of film links the medium intricately to magic and religion, and its consumption can

become an act of religious experience itself. Interest in the spiritual realm, which is an integral part of


19

African cultures and traditions, remains important as part of modern Africa and hardly fades with

conversion to Christianity. Conversion in contemporary Africa usually means a transformation of the

perception of the world that results in a morally dualised cosmology. In accepting the Christian God,

people ‘make a complete break with the past’ (Meyer 1998) by opposing and diabolising witchcraft, the

divinities and other spirits of traditional religion and, in a wider sense, local village life. Traditional

religion is not suppressed but continues to exist within African Christian worldviews under the devil’s

authority (see also Marshall-Fratani 2001; Merz 2008:207-209). Christian life, on the other hand, is often

associated with success, wealth and, above all, modern urban life that is characterised by Western ideals.

The ideals of the successful modern Christian life, together with the machinations of the devil, are

represented in popular video films, thereby popularising them (Meyer 2004:102). By relying on

technology, the explicitly modern medium of film becomes itself an integral part of African Christianity,

mainly in its Pentecostal and charismatic expressions, and in a wider sense of the urban public square, as

Meyer (2006) has shown for Ghana. Ukah concludes for Nigeria that ‘[t]he medium of video has become

one of the preferred channels for the communication of religious truth, hope, ideas, and propaganda’

(2003:226). With this development, popular video films have probably become the most important

cultural expression of the religious and spiritual experience of Africans who are inclined towards

Pentecostal or charismatic Christianity.

Film helps to maintain an integrated worldview where modernity, Christianity and traditional religion

all have their distinct but nonetheless tightly linked spheres. Film as an exemplary expression of

modernity acts as a mediator between the local or traditional and the global or modern (Ukah 2005). In

the urban home television has taken the place of the ancestor or family shrine as a material and visual

mediator of transcendence that facilitates the accessibility to the spiritual realm through dream and vision

(Lyons and Lyons 1987:131-132; cf. Marshall-Fratani 2001:93). In front of the television, people watch

rituals of traditional and modern nature and interact with dreams and visions of the spiritual realm that

popular video films supply. By doing so they engage in the entertainment ritual of film-watching that

functionally replaces traditional rituals of the village and keeps them theatrically alive and remembered in

a modern urban, and often distinctly Christian, setting which itself is projected in film as an idealised and

dramatised dream. In this way popular video films closely follow different aspects and functions of

traditional religion and thereby assure the continuity of religious experience between the older traditional

religion and the newer modern Christianity.

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Mediating Transcendence: Popular Film, Visuality, and Religious Experience in West Africa

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